The resounding public health messaging is clear: Wear sunscreen to help prevent melanoma. But this one-size-fits-all rhetoric misses the mark: Black people stand a very low risk of getting melanoma from UV rays, writes University of Texas at Austin dermatologist Adewole S.…
GHN lives to highlight the critical health stories in the news—so we’re thrilled to be at the Association of Health Care Journalists conference happening now in Baltimore.
Edwin Hardeman’s case against Monsanto started as a personal search for accountability. In court, it cracked open a trove of incriminating evidence against the company that sets the stage for a clutch of other cases alleging the blockbuster Roundup weed killer caused cancer…
In 2006, warning labels from suppliers classified talc as “possibly carcinogenic” when used as a genital antiperspirant/deodorant. Baby Powder hawker Johnson & Johnson knew this—and that talc contained small amounts of asbestos–but doubled down on marketing the product…
What if the answer to cancer was to manage it, rather than try to cure it? After all, a similar approach succeeded in keeping diamondback moths at bay, reasoned Richard Gatenby. The radiologist and Darwin enthusiast had heard of the critters destroying crops, and coming…
Malarial therapy was first touted by Henry Heimlich—of the choking maneuver fame—who injected AIDS and Lyme disease patients with parasites to stimulate the immune system. After the CDC discredited the procedure in the 1990s, Heimlich moved clinical trials to Mexico and…
More than 40% of children worldwide who have cancer are not diagnosed or treated, according to a new Lancet Oncology study. 49% of childhood cancers in South Asia and 57% in Western Africa are estimated to have gone undiagnosed in 2015. But only 3% of cases in Western…
In Botswana, cancer patients camp out in referral hospitals for up to weeks, waiting to be seen. The largest referral hospital has just one medical oncologist. Some travel ~500 miles to get there, some toting their medical records in plastic bags. Endless rounds of…
Cancer death disparities between African Americans and whites narrowed significantly in the last 30 years. In 1990, the “excess risk” in cancer mortality for black people was 47%. A recent American Cancer Society study found that number dropped to 19% by 2016. The dive is…
The US cancer death rate has declined for 25 years—dropping 27% between 1991 and 2016—thanks to early detection and more people passing on smoking, an American Cancer Society report released yesterday shows.
